


Just a Number

by Esselle



Series: Numbered [1]
Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Alternate Universe - Zombies, Blood Drinking, Blood and Gore, Bloodplay, Blow Jobs, Fingering, Gun Violence, Injury, Kinktober 2016, Knifeplay, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-19
Updated: 2017-08-19
Packaged: 2018-12-17 09:32:31
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,459
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11848788
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Esselle/pseuds/Esselle
Summary: 'Hinata's eyes have always been the thing to make people trust him, even when they don't trust his number. They're bright and clear and right now, there's no way for Kageyama to overlook what they're telling him Hinata wants.'--It's little things, that make someone human.





	Just a Number

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the Kinktober challenge, day 17: Blood/Gore.
> 
>  **Please check those additional tags, guys!** KageHina suffer no permanent damage but I love me some gory zombies and went for it.

In the 14th century, the Black Plague swept across the European continent, resulting in the deaths of up to an estimated two hundred million people, decimating the world population at the time. It was the deadliest and most terrifying pandemic ever experienced in human history.

Until now.

The slap of his own feet on wet cement floor echoes in Kageyama's ears as he sprints through the dilapidated parking structure at top speed. He vaults over a row of rusted out car frames with ease, barely out of breath.

When the days are long and nights longer, running comes second nature.

He can hear the whoops and hollers bouncing off the concrete behind him, though he's managed to stay well ahead of the noisemakers. It's just his fucking luck though, getting separated.

And then as if that wasn't bad enough, he had to run into Trappers.

He curses his luck. The only way he can go is up, because they've already cut off the exits on the lower floors. The fuckers have probably been camped out in the structure for weeks, waiting for someone to drop by. If they catch him it'll be bad enough, but if they find Hinata…

He shakes this thought off. He needs to get to Hinata first.

He hauls up another ramp, looking for any kind of escape—old elevator shaft, fire exit, stairwell, _something_ to loop back around the Trappers, when a car to his right suddenly, and without any warning, explodes in a fiery ball of metal and smoke.

The knockback takes Kageyama off his feet, he's so close to it. It feels like all the air has been punched out of his lungs, and they've filled with the acrid smell of smoke instead. His ears are ringing, his eyes water, he feels like an idiot. Of course he ran straight into a fucking trap, they're _Trappers._ At first he doesn't know which way is up, but then he heaves himself onto his back to see the ceiling.

Just in time. He rolls out of the way of a baseball bat, right as it's smashed into the ground where his head would have been a second before. The Trappers have caught up to him. He scrambles to stand, still rocked from the explosion, and thinks he's imagining things when he sees a tiny figure hurl itself onto one of the Trappers from behind.

Then he realizes, of course he's not imagining things. It's just Hinata.

The man screams in pain and shock as Hinata bites down hard on the side of his neck, deep into the flesh, before he rips a huge chunk of the man's throat and neck out with his teeth. The man drops to the floor, bleeding and twitching. Hinata wipes his mouth with the back of his hand, and twirls a hatchet in the other.

"Tobio?" he calls.

"Alive!" Kageyama calls back.

The Trapper with the baseball bat rages, "Kill that fucking Nine!"

Hinata hauls back and flings the hatchet, and the man's head snaps back as the throwing axe embeds itself in the middle of his forehead. _Nice,_ Kageyama has time to think, before the roar of a shotgun blast yanks his attention around just in time to see Hinata fly back as he's shot at point blank range by the last remaining Trapper. He slams into the concrete wall behind him and slumps over, one side of his body a bloody, gaping mess.

"FUCK!" Kageyama yells. He yanks the hatchet free of the other man's head and descends upon the Trapper who shot Hinata, who doesn't stand a chance against him. Kageyama catches him in the throat with the axe before he can fire again, pulling it out of muscle and flesh before the man has finished falling, dead.

He sprints to Hinata's side, dropping to his knees. The other boy is pale, pale, pale, mouth red with blood. The shotgun wound has carved a hole in his side, like someone took an enormous ice cream scoop to it.

"Hinata…" he whispers, reaching out to touch the fallen boy's shoulder.

Hinata comes to with a gasp, sitting up and sucking in a huge mouthful of air before he coughs, blood splattering the ground. "Ow, ow, ow, ow, _ow—_ " he says shrilly, and Kageyama sighs.

"You idiot," Kageyama says, plopping down to sit on the concrete next to him. "What was the point of just jumping at them?"

"They blew you up!" Hinata argues, wincing in pain.

"No, they blew _you_ up," Kageyama says. "I'm fine."

Hinata glares at him, and his lower lip quivers, and Kageyama decides not to be mean to him for a little while. He wishes he'd left the guy with the shotgun alive a little longer to suffer.

After they catch their breaths, Kageyama helps Hinata clamber awkwardly onto him like a clingy knapsack, and Hinata presses his face into the back of his sweaty t-shirt and probably cries. He _did_ just get shot to pieces, though, so Kageyama pretends not to notice.

It won't take them that long to get home. Hinata weighs absolutely nothing, despite his inhuman strength. Well, to be technically correct, he's mostly not human anymore, Kageyama knows. Still…

"They called me a Nine," Hinata says, voice wet and snotty. "I'm, like, not even a Seven—assholes."

"You ripped the guy's throat out with your teeth," Kageyama points out.

"They were gonna kill you!"

"Shut up until we get home, Hinata," Kageyama says, and Hinata falls quiet, pouting.

*

The Ivory Plague is the worst plague humanity has seen in centuries, and it is a whole order of magnitude more deadly than the Black Death. There is no continent on Earth now unaffected. The world population has been reduced to a meager four percent of what it once was. And even most of those souls are more dead than alive.

The remaining humans are divided. There is no one immune from the airborne sickness, or at least, none have surfaced yet. So everyone is infected.

 _How_ infected, then, is the main issue at hand.

Most of the population has died off, burned or buried, never to return (may their spirits rest—for good). Everyone else, on the other hand, has to deal with being a Plaguewalker.

It goes in levels. From One to Three, the sickness is hardly noticeable. Ones are nearly baseline, fragile humans, incubators for the disease, which barely matters anymore. Twos and Threes get all the perks with none of the shit, they're stronger, agile, more resilient. More noticeably pale, too—but hardly.

Four through Six are in the zone where being human starts to mean less. Here, the Ivory starts to show—in this range, skintones range from paling gold and yellow in those who are dark skinned, to sheet white for the already naturally pale. The mid numbers are strong. A Four can take a beating, a Five—a bullet. Or several. Sixes, though mostly outcasts, are sometimes still seen in settlements as security, though they're usually kept under close watch. They are tough as nails and hard to kill.

And they like to eat more than just meat and potatoes.

Like the more dangerous high numbers, Sixes don't need to eat as often as the lower numbers. But every so often, they get cravings for a certain kind of meal: some juicy, fresh human. But a Six can control their impulses around other people, and eating the raw meat of other animals is enough to curb the hunger until the cravings have faded.

A Seven doesn't have that luxury. When the hunger strikes, nothing will satisfy it, unless they consume human flesh. They can either choose to give in to the urges or resist them, which results in a slow, shambling sort of death, though they never truly die unless killed—difficult to do, but not impossible. And it only gets worse from there.

Eights are cannibals of the worst sort, solitary hunters that stalk their prey, their minds and flesh decaying but not quite broken. Nothing less than decapitation can stop them—dismemberment just slows them down. They can still talk, a little bit. Mostly to their food, as they eat it alive. The screams must seem like conversation.

Nines are the true living dead, mindless and starving, mumbling walking corpses. Not smart enough to actively seek out food, they will usually only get to feed if some poor, unlucky soul wanders straight into a horde of them, the only thing that can get them riled and moving. The Nines are the majority of the masses now, slow moving figures ubiquitous on any horizon, covering the streets in the stench of death and rot. They are a threat, if only because their numbers are so massive. Burning is the best way to deal with large groups, as they will not run from fire they can't feel.

Along these divisions, Kageyama is squarely a Three, and his natural physicality has benefitted greatly for it. He could be a valuable asset in any settlement, instead of wandering the concrete wilds.

But the tiny half-sleeping figure nestled against his back, Kageyama's arms supporting his scant weight from below, is nearer to a Seven than a Six. There is no walled town that would accept this ghost white boy with the pale lips and red-rimmed eyes, no matter how much Kageyama insists he isn't dangerous.

The fact is that he _is_ dangerous. He can kill men with his bare hands and survive a third of his body getting blown to pieces.

But Kageyama won't leave him, and so, they wander together.

*

"Home" is nothing more than a ratty, abandoned apartment in a high rise in the city. It's a dangerous place to be, what with the Nines roaming the streets, but they both prefer it to living in the no man's land of the city outskirts, where the low and mid numbers feel safe. Nines, at least, don't come hunting for them.

Hinata has already begun to heal up by the time Kageyama plunks him on the battered couch in the corner of the room (the one they both nearly died for, trying to get it into the apartment—it's just really comfortable). His flesh has already started knitting back together over his bones, and the sluggish flow of blood has mostly completely congealed. It never flows fast, anyway.

High numbers heal freakishly quick, and though this is a bad injury by any number's standards, Kageyama has seen Hinata get hurt bad before and deal with it like a papercut. Still, Kageyama helps him wrap and secure it with cloth—it's not like they want anything _weird_ getting in there.

After Hinata is settled, Kageyama eats and heats up water to bathe with, and afterwards really feels all his aches and pains from getting tossed by the exploding car. Hinata notices, though it would be hard for him not to, when Kageyama drags himself back into the living room and collapses face down onto the couch half on top of him. Hinata makes some sympathetic noises and burrows into his side.

"Hmmm, Kageyama?"

Kageyama grunts.

"I'm hungry…"

He lets this statement hang in the air. Kageyama knows he's free to not respond, if he doesn't feel like it. But instead he turns his head to look at Hinata's pale face. "Does your side hurt?"

"Little bit," Hinata says softly.

He gets cravings. They're closer to a Seven's cravings than a Six, and this is one of the reasons he's been unable to find a settlement that will take him in, even though he's a good fighter, and a good person. Even when he only feeds on animal products, he has to consume massive amounts of raw meat in order to make the cravings go away. But he's still not _quite_ a Seven, and the cravings are infrequent, and can be satisfied by much less than outright flesh. Human blood works just fine, too.

Sometimes, when Kageyama goes on solo supply runs, he'll encounter hostile humans. It's kill or be killed, more often than not, and he has no problem with killing. He also has no problem with delivering those murderous assholes, who'd just as soon kill a defenseless person, right to Hinata on a proverbial silver platter.

Hinata has taken to calling these encounters "PI runs", which stands for… pickles and ice cream. Kageyama finds this less than amusing.

But, whenever that's not an option, he doesn't like watching Hinata suffer through the cravings. When he's hurt, it makes them even worse, and his healing slows down to almost human levels. Then, on top of his injury, he has to deal with headaches, nausea, a gut-wrenching hunger that seems like it'll never fade—Kageyama's been too hungry too often in his life not to do anything about it.

"Yeah, alright," he tells Hinata, who presses his face into Kageyama's shoulder.

"Don't want to if you're not feeling well," he mumbles.

"I feel fine," Kageyama says. "Just sore."

"Okay, and…" Hinata says, sitting up to look at him. Kageyama starts to roll up his sleeve, when Hinata shakes his head, biting his lip as he looks away. Kageyama raises an eyebrow. He knows that look.

"You have a _hole_ in your _side,_ " he says.

"I'm fine, too!" Hinata protests. "Besides I wanna… I want you to feel good, too."

Kageyama sighs. "Hinata…"

Hinata plants both hands on his chest, glaring down at him. "I jumped on that stupid guy," he says, "because when I heard the explosion, I stopped thinking. I thought they hurt you, and I just wanted blood on my hands. I wanted people to be dead."

Kageyama blinks up into his fierce eyes. Hinata's eyes have always been the thing to make people trust him, even when they don't trust his number. They're bright and clear and right now, there's no way for Kageyama to overlook what they're telling him Hinata wants.

"Okay, then," he says.

Hinata owns a little black pocket knife that he has on him at all times, keeps wickedly sharp, and Kageyama has come to know it intimately. The feel of cold metal on his skin, the little poke of the tip not quite piercing, the almost-pain when it makes a sharp, easy incision into his flesh.

Hinata starts that evening at the insides of his thighs. Kageyama lies on the couch in nothing but his t-shirt, holding the bottom in his teeth to give Hinata better access, as much as he needs to bite something to keep from making too much noise. Hinata runs his tongue all over Kageyama's skin, and Kageyama trusts him not to bite too hard. He still bites, though, not to break the skin, but because he likes to taste Kageyama in different ways than that. His cool lips brush over the sore spots, before he sucks on them, drawing the blood to the surface.

Once he's done that, and Kageyama's thighs are mottled with bruises, he makes a thin cut with his knife, high on his thigh where it creases near his groin. He laps at it with his tongue before fastening his mouth there to drink the red liquid.

At the same time, he brushes his fingers, slippery with lube, against Kageyama's entrance. Kageyama exhales violently through his nose, teeth clamping down on the shirt in his mouth. His eyes roll back as Hinata flattens his tongue and drags it slowly over his skin, at the same time that he pushes a finger into Kageyama.

It's been a little while since Hinata opened him up last. It's always preciously intimate, watching Hinata drink from him, but when Hinata is between his legs, combined with the way he slowly slides his finger in and out of Kageyama's body, torturing him for far too long, it's just flat out overwhelming. He finally has to let the shirt fall from his mouth.

"I can take more than that—" he groans, but Hinata just keeps teasing him with one finger, not nearly enough. He's already fighting the urge to move his hips, but Hinata seems to have anticipated that and is keeping him pinned firmly to the couch, one arm looped around his thigh. He's definitely feeling better if he's already managing to overpower Kageyama so easily.

"Can you?" Hinata singsongs, swirling his tongue in circles around the stinging cut on Kageyama's skin, before he slips another finger inside him. Kageyama arches his back against the cushions. "Tobio, _naughty,_ begging for more already."

Kageyama lifts his head to glare at him. "I'm going to kill you," he threatens. "Then I'm gonna wait for you to come back, and then I will kill you again."

Hinata yelps in protest. "You're super mean when you're horny, it's unappealing." He flips his knife one-handed before deftly opening another shallow slash in Kageyama's thigh to drink deeply from the new cut.

"I'm mean because you mess around like a little—" Kageyama tips his head back and sucks in air as Hinata stretches him with his fingers, before pushing in a third alongside the first two.

Hinata is a terror, blood on his lips and chin, grin wide as he asks, "Are you sure you want more?" He starts to fuck Kageyama on his fingers.

"Fuck, yes," Kageyama snaps out, _"fuck—_ yes—Hinata—"

He could take four fingers, and he could probably come without being touched, but then Hinata pulls himself up higher and runs his tongue all over Kageyama's hipbones, before sucking his cock into his mouth. Kageyama arches his back right off the couch, muffling a moan with the back of his hand as Hinata slides his cock to the back of his throat. He pushes Kageyama's knee back toward his chest with one hand so he can twist the fingers he has pressed deep inside him, rubbing firmly at his prostate.

Kageyama comes so hard, he's almost worried, but Hinata swallows it with ease, licking him eagerly clean afterwards. He settles back between Kageyama's legs, cheek resting on Kageyama's thigh as he contentedly licks at the nicks he made, until Kageyama stops shaking and the blood has started to dry. Hinata traces little circles on his skin contemplatively, and is otherwise quiet.

"You're thinking about something dumb," Kageyama says, eyes closed as he lounges on the couch feeling comfortably sated.

"Ugh, Kageyama, I _just_ made you come," Hinata huffs.

Kageyama reaches down without looking and pats around until he finds Hinata's arm, before he pulls him up, and Hinata complains as he is dragged on top of Kageyama to lay on his chest.

"What dumb thing is the dumbass thinking?" Kageyama inquires, somewhat sleepily.

Hinata doesn't answer him for a minute and Kageyama wonders if he really is annoyed, but then he mumbles, "Sorry I can't… really do more or anything."

Kageyama cracks an eye open to stare at him. Hinata resolutely does not meet his gaze, and Kageyama starts to grin.

"Shut up," Hinata tells him.

"Do you mean your—"

"Kageyama, I swear—"

"—performance issues—"

"I going to _actually_ eat you, you asshole!" Hinata yells, digging his incredibly pointy chin into Kageyama's sternum.

Kageyama wraps his arms around Hinata's head and smooshes it against his chest. "Loser," he says. "I don't care that you can't… you know." He doesn't want to say it directly and add more insult to injury. It's not even remotely Hinata's fault, he just doesn't have enough blood in him or a fast enough pulse to really sustain a hard-on.

"I know you don't," Hinata sighs, because this is far from the first time they've talked about it. And Kageyama never cares. And Hinata can't just stop caring, so here they are again.

"We don't have to stop trying, either," Kageyama says. "I mean, it's still possible, it's just really, really…"

"Hard," Hinata fills in.

They're both silent for a grand total of two seconds before they crack up laughing.

"I wasn't going to say it," Kageyama says, which is a lie, and Hinata knows it.

"You totally were about to!"

"Yeah."

He lets Hinata snuggle into his chest, rubbing a hand over his back, careful of his still healing side.

"Thank you for not caring," he says.

"Of course I don't," Kageyama scoffs.

"No, I mean about which num—"

"I don't care," Kageyama says, firmly.

He cares about how they're going to get food for the next seven days, and how he's going to avoid freezing to death over five months of winter, and how many bullets he's got left for his gun. There are so many other things to care about besides whether Hinata is a true Six or climbing toward a Seven.

He cares about Hinata. Everything else is just a number.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> If you'd like to check out more sexy themed KageHina, I'm putting all my Kinktober stories into **[this collection](http://archiveofourown.org/collections/kagehinakinktober2016)**! 
> 
> [I'm [@esselley](http://esselley.tumblr.com/) on Tumblr, [@Esselle_hq](https://twitter.com/Esselle_hq) on Twitter]


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